


Between Befores

by alexiel



Series: Learning Curve [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, M/M, Non Consensual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-28
Updated: 2011-08-28
Packaged: 2017-10-23 04:37:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/246338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexiel/pseuds/alexiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Later, so much later, Gregory Lestrade will sit bloody, bruised, and sore with his back against the door of 221B Baker Street. In the predawn light, he will be little more than a dark shape huddled against a dark door and he will tell Sherlock Holmes that he wishes he'd just left the consulting detective to die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between Befores

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the kink meme.

Later, so much later, Gregory Lestrade will sit bloody, bruised, and sore with his back against the door of 221B Baker Street. In the predawn light, he will be little more than a dark shape huddled against a dark door and he will tell Sherlock Holmes that he wishes he'd just left the consulting detective to die.

Sherlock will say, "He wouldn't have _let_ me die." and Lestrade will laugh too hard to notice Sherlock gently picking him up and leading him through the door.

*

But that's later.

*

Now, right now, Gregory Lestrade is broke, not broken, and exhausted, though not bruised. If he's sore, it's from a good work out, and the only thing he wishes is to crawl into his bed for a nap. He lives in a shitty little flat on Montague Street and there is a tall, skinny junkie collapsed in the hallway leading to his door. The Junkie is shaking, he is wet, and his chest rattles with every breath. Long curls obscure half his face and, in the dim hallway, he looks nothing like the tall, hawk-eyed young man so often photographed with premier Mycroft at state functions.

Right now, he's weak and he's vulnerable and it wouldn't actually be all that difficult for Gregory to step over him and ignore his presence, but if Gregory does that the man might die and Gregory doesn't want any more case related paper work. Not tonight. (At least, that's what he tells himself.) So he pulls the Junkie through the door and into his flat and, after stripping the too skinny man of his clothes, wraps him in a sleeping bag and his only spare blanket and leaves the Junkie to sleep it off next to the small space heater that is the flat's only source of warmth.

Right now, Gregory Lestrade has just saved Sherlock's Holmes' life. Right now, he forgoes his bed and collapses onto his sofa (which he's put beside the sleeping bag since he only has the one space heater. He isn't at all afraid that the Junkie will wake and need him in the middle of the night) Right now, Gregory Lestrade is broke, exhausted, and asleep.

Right now, Gregory Lestrade is thirty five and he's forgotten that it's his birthday.

That's Right Now.

*

Then comes between.

*

Between, Gregory inches towards thirty six and then thirty seven and, at some point, thirty-eight. While time does its slow crawl towards the Later that Gregory doesn't know is coming his life changes without him noticing.

First, there is the Junkie. (The Junkie who keeps his name a secret for almost three whole years and, Later, Lestrade will call himself ten thousand kinds of idiot for allowing it.) The Junkie doesn't move into Montague Street. (Not exactly.) But he begins to fill it with detritus and experiments and dead things. He tells Gregory all about the cases he can't solve (by solving them) and the killers he can't catch (by catching them). He comes and he goes and sleeps in Greg's old sleeping bag and drives Gregory ten thousand kinds of crazy.

All of that happens Between.

*

But between can't last forever.

*

"I've found a flat!" The Junkie tells Lestrade one day. He is looking better, almost clean now, and wearing a pair of Lestrade's old jeans with a t-shirt that might have, at some point, been Greg's wife's.

Lestrade is still half asleep. "A flat?" He asks.

"On Baker Street. The woman whose husband you had extradited from the States." The Junkie smiles. "It's perfect, I'm planning to move my things there today."

Lestrade grumbles something about "good riddance" and then, more fondly, promises to visit.

It's the visit that ruins him.

*

When Lestrade steps through the door and into Baker street for the first time, he finds Later waiting for him in the person of Mycroft Holmes. Mycroft, who sits in a chair across from his brother Sherlock. Sherlock, whom Lestrade can easily identify as a Holmes now that the man has forgone covering half his face with hair and traded in Lestrade's old jeans for figure flattering, bespoke tailoring.

But it isn't Sherlock Lestrade looks at.

It isn't Sherlock who causes Lestrade to go pale so quickly that he actually feels the blood rushing away from his head.

It's Mycroft Holmes.

Mycroft Holmes, Premier of Britain and Europe. Mycroft Holmes who devours Lestrade with his eyes the same way he had once before. Years before. Decades before. (Years and years and forever ago.)

Mycroft, who takes one look at Lestrade and rises swiftly from his chair to pull the Detective Inspector closer to him by his chin. "Ah." He says to Sherlock, once he's looked at Lestrade closely enough, "I see you've found something of mine."

In his corner, in his chair, Sherlock wrinkles his nose in distaste and mutters his disgust. He does not however, Lestrade notices, interfere when Mycroft takes Lestrade with him when he leaves.

(Even Sherlock isn't stupid enough for that.)

*

In the car, as they drive away from 221B, Lestrade wonders if Sherlock has already deduced his Before.

*

Before, Gregory had been fifteen and Mycroft had been twenty-eight. (Twenty-eight and already too powerful for his own good.)

Before, Gregory had been a stable hand at his Uncle’s inn. Skinny, freckled, and not very tall. (He'd been tanned, quick to smile, and possessed large, liquid brown eyes.)

Before, Gregory had been too frightened to say no when Mycroft had commanded the boy to join him in his suite for dinner and too ashamed not to do as he was told in the aftermath.

Before, Gregory had been Mycroft's favorite for one whole summer.

Then he'd run away.

*

But that was Before, when there'd been some place to run to.

*

There is no place to run this time and, all throughout the meal Mycroft shares with him, Lestrade feels inevitability closing in around him like a vise.

Inevitability, and a return to Before.

"Christ but I want you." Mycroft whispers against Lestrade's throat once the table's been cleared, cheek pressed to skin that had been a different kind of soft when he'd last touched it. "I wasn't sure I would." Mycroft's hands skim down Lestrade's sides, under his jacket. His lips ghost over Gregory's neck. "How could I have doubted that I would?" (It's a rhetorical question, and Lestrade is grateful for that because he isn't certain what might pour out of his mouth if he answers. Lestrade knows, logically, that they're of equal height now but with this man, in this room, he isn't any bigger than the fifteen year old boy that had first caught Mycroft's eye.) "Come to bed with me?" And like that boy, Lestrade is too terrified to refuse.

Upstairs, there's already someone lying naked in Mycroft's bed. The pale lithe body of an attractive but empty-eyed youth. The boy's presence annoys Mycroft, who commands him to "Get out." without even looking. His hands never leave Lestrade's body and face barely detaches from the man's jaw line. Lestrade, however, can't help but look at the naked boy when he rises to leave - can barely surprise the gasp that arises at the boy's resemblance to himself at that age. Mycroft notices his reaction anyway.

"Not as beautiful as you." He chuckles breathily. "Not by half."

Lestrade wants to ask if that makes him, Gregory, merely part of a collection. If Mycroft has -.

"Only you." Mycroft answers, fingers working now at Lestrade's belt, "I'd take one or two every so often," and here he tongues Lestrade deeply, "only because they reminded me of you." Which brings on a wave of guilt so strong that Lestrade reaches out and grasps Mycroft's waist to keep himself from falling over. Mycroft interprets the motion as something else and presses in close, then closer, against him. "Obviously, I should've just gone and tracked down the original."

When he dives back into Lestrade's mouth again, Lestrade's mind goes blank with panic. Panic, met with the realization that he isn't actually an inexperienced fifteen year old anymore. Now, on this side of thirty, he knows enough to realize that it'll be over faster if he actively participates. So he kisses Mycroft back and helps him to pull at both their clothes and when he gets down on his hands and knees to count the threads of Mycroft's duvet he allows himself the vicious thought that the man isn't nearly as well endowed as he'd once had a fifteen year old boy believe.

Because this isn't Before.

So, in the morning, when Mycroft has his arms wrapped tight around Gregory's waist and his head pillowed on Gregory's chest - when their legs are still entwined and a warm smile sits on Mycroft's face, Lestrade will ignore how happy the man looks. He will pull away and disentangle himself and, when Mycroft tells Lestrade how happy they'll be once he's moved into Mycroft's residence, he will laugh rather bitterly and say no.

That no will be his first step to Later. Later, which will involve Mycroft's ballroom and too many Marines. Later, which will involve a pretty young boy, a mirror of Lestrade's own self, sitting naked on Mycroft's knee, being told to watch.

*

But that comes later.

\- Fini.


End file.
